Quincy dad and 4 daughters to run marathon again this year

When Joe D'Arrigo turned 70 last January, his only birthday wish was to run on Patriots Day the entire 26.2 miles with Kerri, Beth and twins Jen and Kate by his side.

Jessica Trufant The Patriot Ledger @JTrufant_Ledger

QUINCY – Between them, Joe D’Arrigo and his four daughters have trekked down Route 135, up Heartbreak Hill, past the Citgo sign and across the blue and yellow finish line nearly 40 times.Yet they had never run the entire Boston Marathon route together.

So when D’Arrigo turned 70 in January 2013, his only birthday wish was to run the entire 26.2 miles on Patriots Day with Kerri, Beth and twins Jen and Kate by his side.

They made it just beyond the 25-mile mark last April when bombs exploded at the finish line.

Now, they are ready to try again.

“The marathon for us is a national holiday. It’s like Christmas,” D’Arrigo said. “We’ve been going for 37 years, and no one will mess with our Christmas. That was the attitude. We will run and no one will take Christmas away from us.”

Last year, the family knew something was wrong when the sound of sirens became louder than the cheering and the crowd’s attention shifted away from the runners.

“We made it into Kenmore Square when a police officer said, ‘The marathon is over. It’s been canceled,’” D’Arrigo, who lives in Quincy and raised his family in Scituate, said. “We just thought, ‘What do you mean it’s canceled? What are you talking about?’”

Few knew it at the time, but two bombs had exploded at the Boylston Street finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others.

“There was a lot of chatter, but no one knew exactly what was going on, and no one was telling us anything,” daughter Jen Spaulding, 44, of Scituate, said. “Some people were still cheering, and others were looking at their phones crying. You could see all the faces changing.”

As the details started to emerge amid the chaos, D’Arrigo said a cellphone blackout made checking on friends and fellow runners difficult. But the sisters had passed their husbands and children at mile 21, and, as D’Arrigo had requested, he and his four girls were together.

“There was confusion and a gamut of emotions – anger, sadness, shock – but we were all together, hugging and crying, and that was a good thing,” he said.

“Thank God we were together,” daughter Kerri Roberts, 46, of Scituate said. “If we had run separately, we would have all been finishing around that time and waiting for each other.”

D’Arrigo knew he would run with his daughters again.

“Right away, Dad said, ‘We’ll just come back and do it next year,’” daughter Beth Campbell, 45, of Marshfield said.

“You visualize the end, the finish line, and then it just stops,” she said. “It’s a weird feeling. It’s hard to wrap your head around. You didn’t finish, and it wasn’t your choice not to.”